


Murder and Scandal in Little Polyhex

by dragonofdispair



Series: Across the Great Divide [6]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: BDSM themes, Because Crosswise Keeps Interrupting the Porn, Brief Discussion of Sparklings, But Not Porn, Energy Field Sexual Interfacing, Established Relationship, Family, Flirting, Games, Kinky Games, M/M, Police, Relationship Discussions, Safewords, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Storytelling, Unreliable Narrator, mafia, mystery novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-12 00:24:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7076884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-War: Prowl has a Jazz-kink. Jazz has a Prowl-kink. That doesn’t mean that they can’t indulge a few <i>other</i> kinks along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [12drakon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/12drakon/gifts).



> 12drakon asked, since we’d seen Prowl and Jazz play kinky games with Prowl dominant and playing a police officer character, could I please show what that would look like reversed -- with Jazz as the dominant and playing a character from his criminal days. I spent two hours explaining to myself why that wouldn’t actually work, Jazz has issues with those roles as play, he’d never agree to playing a character he’d ever actually been in this sort of scenario… then spend the next seven days writing about fifteen thousand words of them playing exactly this sort of game. So there’s that. Updates are on fridays.
> 
> A note on the **Unreliable Narrator** tag: Prowl is reporting fairly accurately to the audience even if he is moving between fantasy and reality pretty seamlessly and sometimes without warning -- which might be confusing. However, this is a story about a story about a story that’s based on a mishmash of historical events, real people and places, and yet another story. No one is to be trusted to retell everything perfectly accurately. Prowl is editing out parts of the story he knows Crosswise would strongly disapprove of (even if he’s reporting most those parts to the audience accurately). Jazz as a writer is not accurate when it comes to several of the real-person characters he’s writing about, especially the Praxus police department. Sometimes it is deliberately so, other times it is simply because his perception of them is skewed in some way. So please, readers, you should be cautious of believing everything Jazz, or Prowl, tells you in this fic.
> 
> Beta’ed by 12drakon and Rizobact

_Every cop’s a criminal_  
_And all the sinners, saints_  
        —The Rolling Stones, _“Sympathy for the Devil”_

.

.

.

“What’s this?”

With well-concealed alarm, Prowl watched Crosswise pick up _that specific_ datapad. He didn’t protest his partner picking it up: that would only make Crosswise suspicious. He flipped it on and started paging through the documents.

“It looks like one of our case files,” he mused, “but I don’t have a record in my memory of this case-number. Are you stealing work from other officers again?”

Prowl just looked at his partner coolly. “It is not a case file,” he said as calmly as he could. “It’s an interactive mystery puzzle for a fictitious case.”

Instead of losing interest, Crosswise kept paging through his notes on the case. “All I see is a police file. How does it give you more information on the case?”

“It’s currently paused,” Prowl explained, “which locks everything except my notes and documents that are part of the file. Additionally, many of the events are either location- or time-locked. They will only trigger when the datapad’s GPS system registers that I have taken it to a specific location, or when its chronometer has determined a specific amount of un-paused time has passed.” Some events were both, which made it as close to a real case as feasible; it was possible to get clues simply by being in the right place at the right time, and he would never know how many events had triggered and he had missed simply because he was in the wrong place.

Annoyingly, there were even some events that were set to go off only if the game remained unpaused during Prowl’s sleep-cycle. Realistic, but it had led to one e-mailed rant sent to the game’s author detailing that he was a horrible, sadistic, little glitch that needed to be shot for the good of society. That rant had no effect on the game that Prowl could determine, except perhaps to make Jazz laugh his aft off.

Crosswise scoffed, “I’d say it sounds too much like work, but honestly, we all know that you work cases in your off-time — when you’re not doing things with your little criminal pet that you then go and overshare with the rest of us.” He sneered at the berth that had replaced the old couch in Prowl’s sitting room. Prowl had considered getting a fold-out guest-berth that would appear to be a couch when not in use, but ultimately he had ruled in favor of Jazz’s comfort and gotten an actual berth for his lover to sleep on those nights they spent here at Prowl’s apartment. Jazz was the one who was here most often as Prowl did not entertain guests other than his lover and Crosswise, who had always sat at the kitchen table. Crosswise usually avoided looking at the berth, except to glare venomously, as though he could douse its intended occupant with acid by the sheer power of his distaste for the mech.

“Cease prying and I will cease telling you what Jazz and I do together.” _Overshare_ , Prowl had found, was an effective defense mechanism against his fellow officers and against Internal Affairs’ intermittent check-ins. It shut down the questions rather quickly without ever once implying that he had something to hide (he didn’t, but he did value a certain measure of privacy). He was careful, not to overshare outside the precinct. The _one_ time he had tried using it to discourage a Polyhexian gossip, the blunt details had only encouraged the mech.

He didn’t _lie_. They asked what he and Jazz had been doing at a specific time and he told them. Movies, music, dancing, parties, quiet dates at the library, or even just staying in for energon treats and high-grade... Jazz seemed to enjoy it all, and shared that enjoyment with Prowl whenever he could. And Prowl had found that with the Polyhexians’ respect of his personal space boundary in place, it opened up many activities he’d once thought entirely closed to him. But his terse answers also almost always ended with, “and then we had sex,” which was always true, and never failed to make his coworkers uncomfortable, so that further questions weren’t forthcoming.

Crosswise flipped through the entire “case file”, narrowing his optics at it. “Walk me through it.”

“It is a _game_ , Crosswise. Jazz put it together for me. I _very much_ doubt you want to be involved in our games.”

As expected, his partner’s EM field wrinkled with distaste. “So, what? He wrote this crime novel-game-thing that you’re supposed to solve, and you don’t find it suspicious that he knows enough about these crimes, and police procedure, to make it challenging for you?”

Prowl sighed. “You know as well as I do that he _was_ a criminal, in Polyhex, before moving to Praxus. You also know that Polyhex is outside our jurisdiction. Even if this game was cause for suspicion, the police there will not share their case files on Family members with agencies outside the city-state. That Jazz has this knowledge is not in doubt.”

That made Crosswise frown down at the datapad again. What Prowl said was true. Jazz was no longer involved in his family’s business, but after his connection to Titanium and other Family members had been revealed, he had admitted to Prowl that he _had_ been, back when he’d lived in Polyhex. Some disaster he still didn’t speak about had caused him to pull away, and move cities. Away from police who were hunting him, away from Family rivalries, away from where he would be forced to stay involved just to keep his enemies from killing him.

It had worked, even if _Praxus’_ Organized Crime division had him under suspicion for no other reason than he was Titanium’s nephew.

“How long have you been playing?” Crosswise said again, changing the subject.

Prowl sighed. Obviously his partner was not going to drop it. “He gave it to me almost three decaorns ago.”

“Whoa… hard case.” Crosswise murmured, reading the case notes more carefully. He and Prowl both knew that Prowl’s solve-time for most of his cases was extremely fast. A few orns, on average, occasionally spending a decaorn for extremely hard cases. There had been _one_ , since Prowl had joined the division, that had taken him five decaorns and had run the two of them ragged in the process. His solve-rate wasn’t 100%, of course, even with his specialized systems, but the time in which he either solved, or determined this case was unsolvable, was much faster than for many others. Those unsolved files sat on his desk, just in case some new clue broke them open, until he was forced by Crosswise or Captain Comet to file them as cold cases.

Still, to be actively investigating a case for three decaorns was rare, even if the game had spent a lot of time paused.

“Is it just because it’s a game and you know there’s a solution that you’re still working on it, or...?”

“It’s not a single case, but a series of them, supported by additional events and information. The goal…” Prowl debated for a moment the prudence of this next statement, but overshare _had_ been effective in the past. “The goal is to catch the fictitious Jazz at a crime, after having accumulated enough evidence to justify an arrest and convict him. And then we — ”

Instead of uncomfortable, Crosswise looked delighted as he interrupted Prowl’s expected _overshare_. “And he wrote this for you?”

“Yes.”

“Now I’m even more curious. Walk me through it.”

Prowl sighed. He certainly wasn’t going to tell Crosswise _all_ about the puzzle, given some of the parameters of the game (his partner would definitely disapprove of the secondary goal), but he could at least tell Crosswise about the cases. Prowl started at the beginning…

.

.

.


	2. Part 1

It started in a bathtub.

Prowl sighed contentedly as his sensors reset in response to the unrelenting heat. Cleanser seeped into his joints and drained away the lingering shocks from the truly amazing overload he’d just had. More buoyant in the cleanser than he was in atmosphere, Prowl balanced on his bumper and floated. Only his optics, the tips of his doorwings, and his lazily kicking feet remained above the liquid.

Next to the tub, Jazz was bundled in the blankets that Prowl had wrapped him in, trailing his fingers in the liquid. He stared at Prowl with an utterly charmed expression that never failed to make Prowl feel like his spark was melting into a little puddle of warm feelings at the bottom of his spark chamber. Especially times like now, when his glitch was ruling his reactions, and any other lover would have been annoyed at how long Prowl was taking in the bath. Jazz just looked at him like his sensor reset procedure was one of the most beautiful things Jazz’d seen.

Of course, Jazz himself hadn’t yet fully recovered from the circuit-blowing overloads earlier, so his processor was probably still loopy from that and his judgement not to be trusted. That didn’t stop his besotted expression, or Prowl’s spark from melting into goo in response.

Prowl couldn’t help himself. He ran his optics over Jazz’s form, checking for problems with his lover’s recovery. Taking care of Jazz… It was as much a habit as the bath. Everything seemed fine. Between the warm room and all the blankets, there was no way Jazz could be cold. Everything else was well within normal parameters for Jazz — besotted expression and all — except… Prowl’s optics locked on the abrasion marks his cuffs had left on Jazz’s wrist. Scuffs were normal, but this time the cuffs had rubbed away some of the paint.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, suddenly worried.

“Huh?” Jazz answered intelligently.

Prowl sat up, evaluated his sensors’ recovery, then reached for Jazz’s wrist. Carefully he traced one of the bare patches of metal there. “Did I set the cuffs too tight?”

“Huh?” Jazz said again, his optic band refocusing on his hand held in Prowl’s. “Oh. No. You did fine. Didn’t even notice that was there ‘till you pointed it out.”

Prowl was not so blase. His spark twisted in his chest. He reached for Jazz’s other hand and found similar marks. “Does it hurt?”

“Probably a bit tender,” Jazz answered. He didn’t try pulling his hands away or hiding the marks. “We’ll just repaint that when you get out of the bath.” 

Prowl’s spark still twisted painfully. He felt his doorwings droop. He enjoyed this game, field play without worrying about his partner’s touch instantly turning pleasure into pain. The cuffs allowed him to get closer,  _ almost _ brush his fingers over Jazz’s plating, without fear that Jazz would thrash into them. They  _ had _ done field play without the cuffs, and that was… intense. They stalked each other around the room,  _ hunting _ each other, and trying to reduce each other to a pile of quivering plating by electro-magnetic stimulation alone… It wasn’t as intimate, but he wasn’t going to hurt Jazz to indulge in the intimacy the cuffs allowed. 

“No,” Jazz said firmly, seeming to read Prowl’s thoughts, but more likely just reading the droop of his doorwings and the self-recrimination in his EM field, “Stop thinking that. I might have wiggled a bit more than I usually do, but you didn’t hurt me and we’re not giving up this game.” He leered. “I’ve always had a bit of a cop kink.”

That jerked Prowl out of his slightly depressive cycle of thoughts. “I… Isn’t that dangerous?” — was the first thing that came to his mind, and, embarrassingly, out of his vocalizer. 

Jazz laughed, a high, pure sound of amusement. His hand, still trapped by Prowl’s gentle grip on his wrist, clenched rhythmically as he practically draped himself over the edge of the tub to keep himself from falling over. 

“Jazz?” Prowl didn’t understand what was so amusing.

“Moment,” he gasped in response. “Just…” he took a deep in-vent and held it, then let it out, systems still hiccuping as he calmed himself. Then again. Then a third. Finally. “Okay. I’m calm.” His giggle belied that statement, but he didn’t burst out a second time. “Sorry, just… “ he giggled. “That’s  _ exactly _ what one of my younger Cousins back in Polyhex said last time I talked about this. Same subglyphs and everything. Answer, by the way, is ‘Not anymore’.” He leaned forward and, at Prowl’s nod of permission, planted a very light kiss right on Prowl’s nose. “You are the very definition of safe, sane, and consensual, my love.”

Prowl read the implication immediately. “In Polyhex, however, it would have been dangerous.”

Jazz smiled; he always did when Prowl demonstrated his powerful intelligence on anything, no matter how complex or minor it was. “Yeah. Definitely a case of look but don’t touch. Didn’t stop police from being the number one kink in m’Family. Practically all’a’us drooled when an officer walked into the room. Payrolls considered it a perk.”

“I’m sorry… ‘Payrolls’?”

“Sorry,” Jazz looked embarrassed. “Family slang for a corrupt cop. A cop on the payroll, so to speak. Even so, you don’t let a payroll slap a set of cuffs on you in the course of a game.”

Prowl  _ should _ have been disgusted by this casual discussion of corrupt cops, and of a criminal culture, but instead he was fascinated. This was a glimpse into a very different world. 

“So why did you suggest this originally?” Because it had been Jazz to first suggest the use of Prowl’s cuffs in conjunction with Prowl’s preferences regarding field play. And it had been Jazz to first suggest occasionally playing the game of Prowl pretending to be an arresting officer, and Jazz a suspect.

“You ain’t a payroll, love. And I ain’t…” Jazz trailed off, ducking his head. “It’s something I’ve always wanted ta try. I trust you, and you are  _ amazing _ at this game.”

Prowl just ducked his doorwings shyly. He needed to live up to that trust; he couldn’t live with himself if he proved unworthy… which reminded him of Jazz’s wrist, and the marks on it. He rubbed his thumb over the wrist he was still holding. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Jazz grinned. “This ain’t a hurt. Just a boo-boo. Could kiss it better.”

Amusement flickered through Prow’s EM field. “Or I could repaint it.”

“See? Ain’t a hurt if all it needs is a new coat of paint.”

Prowl allowed himself to smile. “Very well.” He was still going to see what he could do to minimize such abrasions in the future.

He let go of his lover’s wrist and started climbing out of the tub, letting the cleanser drain away. Jazz left to mix up some energon, letting Prowl towel off on his own. 

While he did so, he found himself curious again. Jazz and he came from very different backgrounds. Probably as different as it was possible to be. Prowl’s genitors had not been police officers, but he had still been raised to respect and obey the law. He had been good at solving puzzles, and wanted to help people. He had been determined, as a young mech leaving his genitors to pursue his own life, to make his choices unruled by the constraints of his glitch. And even now, he could think of no better career for himself than the one he was in.

Jazz though… He didn’t know much about how Jazz had been raised. He knew that all Polyhexians were raised with a deep respect and caring for their clans, forming bonds that were meant to last a lifetime. As part of that, Jazz would have been educated by his relatives, and they would have taught him how to be part of their Family. Prowl didn’t know the specifics of what that meant. His theoretical knowledge wasn’t anything like Jazz’s  _ experience. _

And he was suddenly very curious.

There was a danger in exploring this topic very deeply, but perhaps, as a game? Like Jazz’s play acting as a suspect, perhaps they could turn it around just a little, and Jazz could show Prowl what that life was like. It gave them both the option of bending the rules and roles, to protect whatever needed protecting...

He brought it up over energon.

Jazz stiffened, which was not the reaction Prowl had expected. He started to withdraw the request — he hadn’t meant to make Jazz uncomfortable! — but his lover interrupted. “What brought this on?”

“Simple curiosity,” Prowl said. “I thought it would be a safe request, like your desire to occasionally be treated as a suspect. Obviously it is not, and I apologise.”

“I… ain’t going ta say no outright, but what exactly are you thinking?”

“I had no specific thoughts,” Prowl stared down at his energon. “I know that there are questions I should not ask, for the sake of both our integrity, so I thought perhaps to ask what it is you felt safe showing me.”

He didn’t see Jazz’s tense expression ease, but he did feel his EM field relax. “Playing at you arresting me’s safe, ‘cause I could be anyone in that scene. Thief or Family Sire, cuffs go on the same way. Flip it, and the roles and rules… they ain’t so flexible, and I don’t want to imagine you in any’a them. S’dangerous.”

Prowl narrowed his optics as he thought. Arresting someone had rules too, ones he blatantly disregarded for their games. So what Jazz really meant was that if put in the position of a Family member during a game, he probably wouldn’t be able to suspend his disbelief enough to bend the rules. Jazz didn’t fear Prowl hurting him, but… Prowl looked up. 

“You won’t hurt me. I trust you.” Jazz smiled at the statement, EM field relaxing, only to flicker with surprise at Prowl’s next question. “You were never arrested in Polyhex, were you?”

Because that would mean Jazz was willing to play with what had never actually happened (being arrested), but not with roles from his real past. Especially not his roles as an active Cousin.

“Naw…” Jazz confirmed slowly, “Ain’t anyone in Polyhex as good as you are, love.”

“Flatterer,” Prowl said fondly.

Jazz just gave him a roguish tilt of his optic band. “Ain’t flattery if it’s true.”

Prowl let the conversation sit there for a moment while they drank their energon. Jazz was pulling out the paints so they could touch up the marks on his wrists when Prowl said, “What about a ‘payroll’?”

“Huh?” Jazz said. “Run that by me again, this time with training wheels.”

“You said you didn’t want to imagine me in any of the roles I could play in relation to a Cousin. But you also said earlier that you could indulge in a police-kink with payrolls. Is that a role I could play?”

Prowl didn’t think Jazz would be offended by Prowl bringing up the topic a second time, but he couldn’t help a thread of doubt. He didn’t want to pressure Jazz into something he was uncomfortable with. It was one of the promises they’d made to each other, but Jazz  _ had _ said that he wasn’t saying no.

Instead, Jazz looked amused. “Prowl, love, I don’t think you’re  _ capable _ of playing the part of a payroll. Ain’t a bad thing. You ain’t got a single corrupt circuit in your processor. It’s part of you being you.”

Carefully Prowl applied the first coat of paint to the delicate plating of Jazz’s inner wrist, and listened to his lover’s systems hitch with the first note of renewed arousal. He tilted his doorwings in a deliberately aggressive gesture at odds with the way he bent over to paint the details. “That sounds like a challenge.”

Jazz laughed. “Y’know what? This sounds like it could be fun. You convince me you could be a payroll, and I’ll treat you like one for a night. Make a whole event outta it. Rent us a ‘manor’ and everything.”

Prowl smiled.

Seven orns later Prowl was still trying to figure out how Jazz expected him to prove he could pretend to be a corrupt officer. He thought about it, intermittently, and it was on his mind when his lover presented him with the datapad.

“Everything’s fictional. Takes place here in Praxus, but the way the department and stuff works is closer to Polyhex.” Jazz explained as he introduced Prowl to the game. “There’s several outcomes. You can solve it just by being your way-too-competent self, all straight-laced, no bending the rules, and you can arrest me like normal. Or you can follow some of the plot-threads into my employ, maybe try and blackmail me with your evidence, and I’ll hire you and we’ll play it that way.”

“And if I can’t accumulate the evidence needed?” Prowl asked, because he was unsure how complex the crime was going to be; he had never investigated organized crime cases before.

“Then we know there ain’t a cop alive who coulda caught me before I retired.”

“Hmm… “ Prowl looked at Jazz flirtatiously through half-shuttered optics. “I think I’ll need a bit more incentive than that —”

.

.

.


	3. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I forgot to post this before I left for the day, but yay! for "new" iphone and its new posting-on-the-go options ::posts::

“Stop! Overshare!” Prowl just gave Crosswise a peeved look. “Don’t, Prowl. I know you do that just to get us to drop the topic. It’s not going to work now. Just tell me about the _case;_ I don’t need to know anything about what you and Jazz are planning once you’ve won.”

Crosswise’s confidence was warming, especially given Prowl was five orns of play time into the game and still did not have the evidence he needed to arrest the fictional Jazz. He didn’t even have any evidence fiction-Jazz had committed a crime, though he had enough  suspicions to fill a case file of just them. Nor had he seen any opportunities to do any favors, or take any bribes, or anything else that would lead him towards the path of corruption. He did have a very promising lead on that, but…

“Thank you for your confidence,” Prowl said, not sharing any of his other thoughts.

His partner waved it off. “No way any two-bit smuggler’s smarter than you.”

Smarter, perhaps not. But Jazz had a lot of advantages. He was smart, clever, had the support of his fictional clan, and loyalty of the fictional populace who lived on his “turf”. Prowl was starting to suspect that the precinct captain was already in Jazz’s pocket (or in the pocket of someone else related closely enough to engender loyalty). Experienced, where Prowl was not: Jazz had once had to cover up the sorts of crimes Prowl was trying to pin on him, while Prowl was a homicide cop. As far as he could tell, that was the one crime he could say with any certainty that fiction-Jazz had _not_ committed.

Not directly anyway.

.

.

Annoyingly, the first timed event had gone off only two joors into Prowl’s recharge cycle.

The datapad chirped like his communications suite. Still half-asleep, he transmitted “Prowl here,” to the static-laden ether of an empty communications channel before he woke enough to realize he was not _actually_ being pinged.

It took a moment longer to realize it was Jazz’s puzzle trying to get his attention.

He thought about ignoring it, but then he hauled himself out of his berth. “Prowl here,” he said to the datapad’s voice input.

“Dispatch, Corporal Prowl. Report to these coordinates,” it answered in the same emotionless voice that delivered real dispatch notices.

Prowl started composing his first irate email to his lover. He knew Jazz would find Prowl’s annoyed composition extremely amusing, rather than a deterrent, but he did it anyway. It made him feel better.

He briefly debated ignoring the false dispatch and going back to sleep, but he was already awake. He might as well check out the “crime” Jazz wanted him to solve.

He didn’t use his lights or sirens as he would have when heading to a real crime scene, but the late joor still got him to the scene fairly quickly. He received his first location-based event when he got there: a crime scene.

In reality, the location was dark and quiet. It was a warehouse in the shipping district, where goods were stored before being transferred to either a shuttleformer or a freight train. Dark, quiet, even a bit spooky. He worried about trespassing for a moment, then he saw Ricochet leaning against the open door, watching him.

“Gotta make sure a pretty lil thing like you don’t get in any trouble out here in the scary dark,” Jazz’s twin heckled. “Could be sparkeaters around.”

Prowl doubted it, but he nodded his thanks anyway. “This place…?”

“One’a ours,” Ricochet drawled. “100% legit too, so don’t worry your pretty lil processor about what you might see in there.”

Ricochet was… not harmless. He was a Family enforcer, according to Turbine’s files. Threats and assault were his stock in trade, and when he was suspected of plying that trade on people, most of them refused to testify after the fact. He had served two sentences for assault in Polyhex, the first before he reached his majority, but had been more careful since moving to Praxus. He left a lot of mechs who had “fallen down the stairs” in his wake. Almost all of them — from members of rival Families to foreign-born con artists — had their own lists of crimes attributed to their names, which told Prowl a lot about how the Polyhexian Families operated. Nothing could make him comfortable in Ricochet’s presence, but Prowl didn’t fear him. They had come to an understanding.

So no, Ricochet was not harmless. However, his heckling and flirting was, and Prowl ignored it as he read through the game’s description of the area immediately outside the warehouse.

The warehouse was quiet in reality, but the fictional one was abuzz with activity.

The game described the swarms of other officers who gathered around a major crime scene. Lower-ranked responders who cordoned off the area, forensics mechs, three coroner-medics grumpily complaining about being woken up in the middle of the night when it was going to be joors before they were allowed to take the bodies. The activity had attracted several bystanders, though the late hour and remote location meant that there were no crowds.

A fictional Crosswise met him at the edge of the cordon, right as a media van pulled up and transformed…

.

.

“Wait!” the real Crosswise interrupted. “He actually wrote me in there?”

“Yes. You’ve been your usual helpful self in working cases,” Prowl answered.

“Would have expected the little glitch to make you a lone-turbowolf, or turn me into a bumbling idiot.”

Prowl allowed himself to smile. “No, the simulation diverges from reality as necessary, but he has kept his characters as in-character as possible. Including you.” Privately Prowl suspected his partner had been included in the story for sole purpose of making the secondary plotlines — the ones where Prowl was supposed to seek employment with Jazz as a payroll — more difficult to find and follow, by providing oversight over Prowl’s activities.

“Alright. I was just surprised, is all.”

“Now if I can continue without interruption?”

Crosswise just made an impatient gesture to go on.

.

.

A media van pulled up and transformed. The mech immediately zeroed in on the two senior officers, bypassing the swarm to shove a microphone in Prowl’s face. “Skyglass, for Praxus Local News. What’s going on in there?”

Prowl had no trouble imagining the scene; it had happened more often than he cared to remember. His stock answer was, “You know we cannot discuss that at this time.”

Predictably the news-mech didn’t back off. “Was someone killed?”

“No comment,” Prowl entered the warehouse and the cordoned-off area.

“Officer!” the newsmech called as he was caught by those securing the perimeter. He couldn’t be removed entirely from the scene, of course. His media credentials granted him the right to be there, but he would not be allowed onto the crime scene itself.

The first thing Prowl saw was the flashes of the forensics team’s cameras. As he moved in to examine the details, mechs stepped out of his way to let him see the bodies.

Yes. Bodies. Jazz obviously wanted to start his little adventure with a bang.

Six bodies in total, though the splatter patterns of energon and other fluids made it obvious there should be more. Between three and ten more bodies had been removed from the scene entirely. The game gave Prowl the details of the fluid spray and bullet holes scattered across the walls. He _could_ wait for the game to deliver the forensics team’s report, but he could also… Prowl fed the details to his logic simulator, letting it reconstruct the scene. It was more difficult than when he could work directly from a physical scene, but he had his results.

Four missing bodies, and seven more mechs shooting. Ten verses seven, ten total killed, and the winners had cleaned up their dead, but left the others.

“Gang fight,” Crosswise concluded at the same time Prowl did, so he nodded in agreement. His partner made a completely real-sounding noise of frustration. “Unless we catch the survivors at the hospital, we’ll never find them.”

Prowl was forced to agree with that too.

He carefully examined the bullet holes. Military grade weaponry. The descriptions were detailed enough that Prowl knew Jazz had specific weapons in mind. He identified a few, from scorch patterns and shell casings, but there were at least some weapons that weren’t in his database. That alone was enough to tell Prowl they were highly illegal to possess. He’d have to wait for the forensics report to tell him the exact specifications. Maybe he’d get lucky and the weapon types would be in the report, but knowing Jazz’s preferences, likely not. Mech _really_ liked it when Prowl figured out things for himself.

Gang fight, military grade weaponry not available in Praxus, and the winners went through a lot of effort to clean up after themselves, but left behind the frames of their rivals. As a warning, perhaps?

Family squabble, Prowl concluded.

Except it couldn’t be that simple. None of the left-behind frames were Polyhexian, nor were they Praxan. A third group, also equipped with military grade weaponry.

He wasn’t surprised when, after four breems, the officers canvassing the area called in and reported a second crime scene.

Prowl and Crosswise did not manage to get there before the reporter did. There was no way this wasn’t ending up on the morning news. At least he didn’t have to be bodily thrown out of the area as they helped set up a second cordon, before turning to look at the body.

A single tankformer, in vehicle form, shot neatly through the spark, as — if his tread-tracks were any indicator — he was fleeing the warehouse where his cohorts had died. Sniper. High powered laser rifle from a high angle. Prowl automatically tracked the trajectory and looked up.

The only building that could be a sniper’s nest was barely in Prowl’s line of sight. “We have a third scene we need to secure.”

“Well scrap,” Crosswise said.

Prowl nodded. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to make sure there were no survivors and nothing left behind to identify the second set of combatants.

Which is about when Ricochet, watching Prowl pace around the darkened warehouse district talking to a datapad, finally started laughing.

.

.

.


	4. Part 3

Prowl was good. He actually went and “secured” and examined the third scene, the sniper’s nest almost five city blocks from the first scene, before pausing the game and going back to sleep.

The sniper hadn’t left anything behind, of course, but Prowl had noted that the warehouse and most of the surrounding area could be seen. He’d also put down a tentative speculation that their sniper was military, or at least military trained. A clear night in Praxus might be the best conditions a sniper could hope for, but it had still been an expert shot.

As soon as he came out of recharge and unpaused the game, he told the datapad the next step was to go back to the office and call the hospitals. The game let him do this very necessary busy work from the comfort of the table next to his energon dispenser.

He didn’t expect to get any hits, not with a group so obsessive about covering their tracks, but he had to try. It was always possible they missed something. Maybe the morgues.

Jazz pinged for entry just as Prowl resorted to threats to get the third hospital manager to cooperate with the investigation. Even after that, Mistycurrent only told him that there had been no one who’d come in with anything like those injuries, any time in the last decaorn, much less in the last joor (of in-game time). He extracted a promise from her to give him a call if anyone did show up, and turned his glare at Jazz, who sauntered up and took his usual seat across from Prowl. 

“Having fun?” the troublemaker chirped. “I got your message.”

“Jump in a fire and die,” Prowl retorted.

“Yeah,” Jazz grinned, “That’s pretty much what you said in your message too.” Prowl didn’t exactly  _ remember _ with any clarity what he’d written in that message — angry sleep texting — but he wasn’t surprised. “So, any theories you want to share with the class?”

“I know as well as you do that it will be impossible to tie your Family, much less you, directly to the crime. You cleaned up the scene too well for that. I am simply doing necessary legwork before following the more likely and less time sensitive leads.”

Jazz just smiled widely. Smug amusement leaked from the seams of his armor and suffused his EM field. “Iz’at so?”

Prowl just gave him an exasperated look and told the game he was calling the fourth hospital. As usual for such calls, the nurses didn’t know if they were allowed to tell him anything, the doctors were too busy to answer his questions, and the manager was obstructionist. Prowl didn’t give up until he had extracted yet another promise for a call if someone — alive or dead — did come in with those injuries. In the process, however, he got bumped back down to the nurses, where he was fortunate to speak to the head night-shift nurse, who confirmed what the manager had said with much less fuss, but also invited him out to drinks “after they had both caught up on some needed recharge.” Prowl’s doorwings flared in surprise. 

“So is that a lead or just one of the characters trying to flirt?” he asked Jazz.

Who only gave him a smug look and shrugged. “Dunno.”

Which was a filthy, dirty  _ blatant lie _ because Jazz had written the thing, so it was with a vindictive little smile that Prowl accepted the offer and made arrangements to take her out to dinner at a romantic little eatery near the hospital before her next shift. 

Crosswise, finishing up his task of calling the last two hospitals, wolf whistled at him.

.

.

“Which I would never actually do. Prowl! I thought you said he kept me in-character!”

“I also said that he had diverged from reality as necessary.”

“How is it  _ necessary _ that I care one way or the other about you having a date with the head trauma nurse?”

Prowl just gave him an exasperated look. “By having a character react to it, it told me that my acceptance had been an anticipated outcome, and thus either a lead or a deliberate red herring, rather than simply a case of my wandering off track. Besides, from Jazz’s point of view, you  _ are _ inordinately interested in my romantic life. I’m sure he thought it reasonable.”

“I  _ don’t _ give a flying frag about your sex life!” Crosswise hissed.

Prowl just tilted his doorwings in an expression of disbelief. “Since I began dating Jazz, you have made two-hundred and eleven attempts to get me to break it off. Thirty-two of those attempts have involved attempts to set me up with someone you deem more appropriate. Fifty-two of those attempts took place before either you or I knew Titanium was his uncle.  _ One-hundred and five _ of them have taken place in a context that ensured Jazz either witnessed them, or found out about them later. From his point of view you  _ are _ interested in who I date.”

Embarrassment flushed across his partner’s EM field and his doorwings tucked. “He’s a troublemaker and a rule breaker, and I don’t think he’s good enough for you, that’s all.”

Prowl begged to differ on two of those three points. Jazz was a troublemaker, sure enough. He pushed limits (especially speed limits) by nature, and had been raised to think of the laws more as inconvenient obstacles rather than  _ rules, _ but the rules he did follow — his Family’s, his own, the ones Prowl laid down in regards to the two of them, the ones Jazz laid down for himself in regards to their relationship — these rules, he followed to the absolute letter. Crosswise was one of those who saw the laws as inviolable. Any minor offense would have made the mech unworthy to him, but Prowl saw the difference between past and present, between suspicion and proof, between speeding and murder. Between Jazz’s family and Jazz himself. 

“Jazz loves me,” is what he said. “More importantly, he respects me. I have never —  _ never _ , Crosswise — been happier in a relationship than I am now.”

Crosswise just muttered something unintelligible in response.

Prowl looked at him coolly. “Shall I continue?”

“Sure. You set up a date with the trauma nurse. What did you do next?”

.

.

Prowl closed down the communications channel with the nurse and looked at the time. If this was an actual case, it would still be fairly late at night, he’d be running on fumes, and there would be no other follow-up he could do before his shift started in the morning. So he wrote a quick, preliminary report to the Captain and told Crosswise he was going to go finish his recharge cycle. His partner bid him to sleep well, because it was going to be a busy shift the next day. 

The game informed him that if he wished his character to take the time to recharge, he would have to leave the game unpaused for the duration of his recharge cycle. Prowl comforted himself with the fact that Jazz had made plans for today, so the risk of something else happening while he “slept” was minimal. He confirmed to the game that he was going home to sleep and placed the datapad down on the table.

Jazz was still looking at him amused. “Having fun, at least?”

“Waking me up in the middle of the night and making me drive out to one of your family’s holdings so that I could examine the ‘crime scene’ was a bit much,” Prowl replied.

“Aww… Come on,” Jazz whined. “You and I both know how important actually walking a scene is.” Prowl nodded. “And how’re you gonna get the whole  _ experience _ without the occasional middle of the night wake-up call?”

“You mean the experience that is my actual  _ job? _ ” 

Jazz waved that away. “Details. Just means I gotta work extra hard to make it realistic. Can’t tell me that sleep deprivation ain’t realistic.”

Prowl coughed a laugh through his vents. “And you just want to torture me.”

“Perk, not motive,” Jazz replied cheekily. “So you ready for your spa day? Got the whole place rented, just us, for a couple’a joors. And they’ve got a nice boiling hot oil pool for when you need a break from the massage and detailing. Get you a nice polish, if not a full repaint.”

“ _ All _ to ourselves?” Prowl asked, with a flirtatious—

.

.

“Overshare! Skip to when the game woke up for your ‘shift’.”

.

.

Jazz’s planned spa day went without interruption, but the alarm telling him he needed to wake up for his fictional shift went off right as he and Jazz were in the middle of—

.

.

_ “Primusdamnit Prowl! I don’t want to know.” _

“You realize that by the very nature of inquiring about the puzzle, you are asking about Jazz and my interfacing habits?”

Crosswise looked pained, but determined. “Just stick to the case.”

.

.

Prowl was  _ busy _ when the alarm telling him he needed to “wake up” for his “shift” went off. Irately he hit the datapad’s snooze button while Jazz laughed. Prowl just growled and ignored the game in favor of his lover.

When he went back to the game over dinner, Jazz kicking his feet up on the table from his usual spot, he told the fictional Crosswise he’d accidently slept in, and apologized for being late.

Since the game had not anticipated Prowl’s lateness, Crosswise did not have anything to say to that. Instead, he simply informed Prowl that the forensics and coroners’ reports had come in, and asked if he’d seen the news yet this morning.

“No,” Prowl answered, since the morning news report had been an event that had triggered while he ignored the game.

Unsurprisingly, Skyglass had run the story of last night’s gang fight, along with the footage he’d managed to get of the seventh body outside. And, “No group has, as yet, claimed responsibility for this massacre, but sources within the police confirm that there were at least seven bodies found in the warehouse district last night. We have to ask ourselves if this is the prelude to another bloody string of gang related incidents.”

Prowl snarled to himself. He immediately made an appointment to speak with the Primusdamned reporter tomorrow; meanwhile, the rest of the news report scrolled across the datapad’s screen. Primusdamned reporter no sooner finished recapping the fictional gang fights three vorns ago, resulting from the unexpected death of one of the area’s most prominent Family Sires without a declared heir, that he started speculating wildly about rumored rogue military factions and mercenaries. Prowl zeroed in on the information about the gang fights and Family intrigue. That hadn’t happened here in Praxus, but in Polyhex, approximately two-hundred vorns ago. It was interesting that Jazz would draw his attention to it.

He looked up at Jazz, who was watching him with an amused visor. “Is it cheating to request the media coverage from Polyhex’s archives?”

Jazz got that utterly besotted look he got whenever he was impressed with Prowl’s processing abilities, and Prowl knew he’d figured out something major about the puzzle: Jazz was reusing source material. Which meant that, theoretically, he was working a case that the Polyhexian police had either already closed, or filed as a cold case long ago. Maybe he’d be able to dig out some media coverage of it as well, but the police files were closed to him. Even if he’d thought it appropriate to request police files to assist in solving a puzzle game, Polyhex  _ did not _ share files on Family members, or cases that involved them. Polyhex was possessive and protective of its Families, even as their police did their best to track and imprison them.

Nor would they be interested in whatever details about any open cases Jazz’s puzzle revealed. As long as Jazz was not in Polyhex, they emphatically did not care about what he did.

No, whatever information there was to be dug out of Polyhex, it had to be dug out of the public records. Media archives.

To Prowl’s question, Jazz just kicked his feet again. “Knock yourself out.”

With a dubious look — that had been too easy an agreement — Prowl set up an algorithm on his apartment computer to search for the relevant news articles from Polyhex, then went back to the game.

He told Crosswise to start tracking down who’d leaked the information. Then he started reading the forensics’ and coroners’ reports.

The coroners confirmed the causes of death: acute energon loss as a result of being shot in four cases, including the tankformer. Three had also been violently stabbed with a wickedly sharp knife of some sort. The coroners included sketches.

Sketches that happened to match the upgraded melee attachment for a Neutron Assault Rifle, of which, according to the forensics team, there had been at least four in the warehouse. Other weapons included half a dozen Scatter Blasters, at least three X18 Scrapmakers, a Thermo Rocket Cannon, and three unknown energy weapons of two different types. The sniper outside had wielded a Photon Burst Rifle. Prowl started running the serial numbers for the weapons left behind on the corpses (three Scatter Blasters, two Neutron Assault Rifles, one of the Scrapmakers, and the Rocket Cannon) through the city- and Cybertron-wide registries. Scatter Blasters were legal in Praxus, though restricted and tracked. The rest were illegal except in the military.

He’d been afraid there would be discrepancies between the forensics report and the simulations Prowl’s on-board computer had constructed. This early in the game, he wouldn’t have known if any discrepancies were due to Jazz’s unfamiliarity with how these crime scenes were processed, or deliberate indicators of incompetence or corruption among the forensics staff. Instead the report and his own simulation matched to within Prowl’s normal margins for errors, and he knew that Jazz had the expertise needed to keep the reports accurate, or had access to someone who did. Discrepancies were, from here on out, to be assumed to be deliberate on the part of the author.

He also started searching the records on their dead mechs. All seven frames were Kaonex, so he started there.

When he was done, and the first results were starting to accumulate in his case file, Prowl debated the prudence of allowing them to continue to run while he slept. He decided he didn’t want to risk being woken by another event in the middle of the night. He had real work tomorrow. He paused the game, and was informed that while the game was paused, he would only be able to access information already in this case file.

.

.

.


	5. Part 4

There was something… relaxing about the routine of digging up information for a case when he knew there wasn’t really any lives or escaped criminals riding on the investigation. He spread the very busy in-game shift out over the next decaorn, digging out the dead mechs’ criminal records from the Kaon department, digging out the registry numbers from those weapons he had the serial numbers for…

They’d come from a particular group of weapons from Blaster City that had disappeared in transit. 

By the end of the decaorn (the end of his shift in the game), he had concluded that the warehouse shootout was the result of a foreign weapons smuggling outfit attempting to move their goods through the locals’ turf. The locals had won the conflict and left the bodies, either as a warning to the rest of the group, or for the police to clean up so they wouldn’t have to. Prowl narrowed his optics. Canvassing the nearby areas for anyone who recognized the dead mechs was next on his agenda, after the meetings with the trauma nurse and reporter.

And in the real world, he augmented that research by delving into Polyhex’s media archives, looking for information on the succession conflict Skyglass had mentioned. 

Bloody, he was forced to agree with the reporters, both the fictional Skyglass and the other, less imaginary ones that had covered the story as it happened.

Jazz just shrugged when asked. “If it were just about who followed who, who got to give the orders, it wouldn’t’ve been so bad, but there was… more at stake.”

Prowl dropped the topic with his lover.

Instead he teased the idea of tracking down Ricochet and asking him about it. Jazz’s twin, at least, would not feel the need to preserve Prowl’s innocence. But would it be  _ respectful _ to go around Jazz like that to get his answers?

In the end he didn’t, but someone found  _ him _ .

Prowl did not often eat anywhere but home, in the precinct commissary, or out with Jazz, but occasionally he did feel the need for a change of scenery. Those times, he’d found it good to go to one of the several places in or just outside Little Polyhex. The boundary Jazz had first laid down at the block party held strong even now. It didn’t matter how crowded a cafe was — there was always an empty space around Prowl, as long as the majority of the clientele was Polyhexian. He tried not to insert himself into places that were  _ too _ crowded for that reason, but it made the decision to go out on those nights he wanted to even without Jazz at his side easier.

Tonight he was hoping to surprise Jazz after his performance. The crowd of mechs waiting for the singer to come on stage parted, and someone strode through them with a purpose, headed toward Prowl. He had always been very aware of what people around him were doing, and he looked up before Titanium invited himself to sit at the table Prowl occupied like he owned it. Maybe he did.

“My nephew says you are growing curious about us.” Titanium did not waste words on small talk. He was also one of very few Polyhexians Prowl had met that had not deliberately hung on to their accent. Instead, he spoke in a clear imitation of Iaconi nobility. 

Titanium was dangerous, there was no doubt about that, but much of the overt threat that had been there when Prowl had first met him had been replaced by something that was almost… familial. It seemed Prowl had been adopted, whether he wanted to be or not.

However, it did not escape Prowl that the mechs making up the crowd keeping their distance from Prowl drew back even further. He could never tell if that was fear or an attempt to give them privacy. The residents did not fear Titanium, nor Prowl (anymore), but together the pair made them wary.

“I want to get to know my lover better.”

Titanium nodded as though he understood, but what he said was, “Jazz isn’t involved in our lifestyle anymore.”

“That doesn’t,” Prowl answered calmly, “make who he was and who he was raised to be any less a part of who he is now. And you love him, still. It may be my Praxan prejudices speaking;  _ love _ is not something I associate with crime syndicates, but there is no doubting it, which makes who you are a part of who he is.”

“Unaccountably wise of you,” was the response.

Prowl just tilted his doorwings in a brief challenge. 

Titanium chuckled. “Very well. I’m curious as to what you expect to learn without incriminating us, or yourself.”

In answer Prowl showed him his research into the Polyhexian news archive. “Events in Polyhex, by definition, cannot be used to incriminate either of us. However, I do not want to inquire into anything that makes Jazz uncomfortable.”

“Do you want to know how many he killed then?”

“No,” Prowl shook his head. “I do not doubt he did so, but that is the past. Your laws may not be my laws. Your duties, not my duties. But I too have killed in the course of doing my duty. Jazz is not a killer.”

“You are… No wonder my nephew loves you.” Unconsciously, Prowl’s doorwings tucked. “I don’t know that those particular events are painful to him, but he was very young. And there was something very personal at stake for him, though I believe he recognises it only now, in hindsight. I’m not surprised he’s reluctant to speak of it to you. He was just starting out independently of his genitors, along with Ricochet; they were partners. His sparker was one of the contenders in that conflict, and his rival was… an idiot. Had he won, our branch would have gone bankrupt and been absorbed into another Family. As young near-heirs, both of them would have been required to take conjux from the new Family to cement the alliance.” 

“Which is probably why he’s reluctant to talk about it with me,” Prowl murmured to himself, “beyond what made it into the news reports.”

“Indeed.”

“This is not why he chose to leave Polyhex, though.” It was a statement, not a question. To start, the timing did not match up.

“No, and that I won’t talk about. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

“Of course.”

Titanium didn’t change expression, but a flicker of pleased affection passed through his EM field, there then gone like lightning.

Prowl let the silence stretch for only long enough to drop that non-existent line of questioning, then asked, “Are political bondings common?”

“Not anymore,” Titanium answered. “But we are, and always have been, defined by our sparklines. We are Slink’s descendants.” He stopped, and Prowl waited expectantly; the silence stretched again before the elder mech chuckled. “You are right, I should not expect you to know what that means.”

“You are proud of what you are and where you came from,” was all Prowl said.

“We are,” Titanium did not try denying it. He drummed his fingers against the table. “I suppose it is your right to know: every difficulty your kind — by which I mean  _ police _ , not Praxans — has in dealing with Polyhex’s policies in regards to us stems from who and what Slink was to Polyhex. We of his spark won’t call him a hero, but that is the word used outside our clans.”

Interesting. Something to pass onto Turbine and the rest of the Organized Crime division. It may not make the reality any less frustrating, but knowing the reason might make them more diplomatic when dealing with Polyhex’s liaisons.

“Thank you for telling me,” Prowl said. “You know I will pass it on, for the benefit of my clan.”

“For Praxus, yes I know. Very enlightened of you, to take us on as those you protect along with those you were born to.”

“That’s what the police are, what we’re supposed to be: protect and defend.”

Titanium  _ harumphed _ and somehow managed to do even that in an elegant Iaconi accent. 

“Protect, defend, and  _ avenge _ .” Prowl did not allow himself to shudder. Of course a criminal from a long line of criminals would see the punishment of crimes in that light. For Homicide cops especially, crimes couldn’t always be prevented, and that’s when the police tracked down the perpetrator and ensured that he was punished for it. He started to say something, but Titanium interrupted. “That is simply the way it is. You are our mirrors; it has always been so. Only the methods by which we acquire our resources differ.”

Prowl did not agree, but he did not say so. He knew that Titanium protected those he considered his, and that he considered all of Little Polyhex his. When Titanium caught someone preying on the ones he considered his, they never saw a courtroom. But for all that, he still was one of those who preyed on them, feeding their vices for profit.

“You are brave, my-almost-nephew, for your disagreement.” Titanium said, perhaps reading Prowl’s feelings on the matter from some subtle twitch of this doorwings, or shift in his EM field. “It’s good for me, I think, to have you. New perspectives are valuable, and I was becoming too set and sure of my kingship before you came.”

Prowl did not know what to say to that, so he did what he always did when he was unsure of his words: he said nothing.

To which Titanium chuckled. “Very well. Love may not be something you have been taught to expect from ruthless crime lords, but you have mine just the same. And in the interest of that, I will give one last piece of familial advice: talk to Jazz about sparklings soon. It is not urgent, but he will not be the one to bring it up with you for fear of pressuring you. Yet we are Slink’s legacy, and legacies must to be carried into the future. At some point we all become myths and legends.” Another chuckle. “Besides, I need to be able to tell my brother  _ something _ so he’ll stop pestering me, even if what I tell him is that he will have to wait until Ricochet finds someone and settles down, unlikely as that is.”

.

.

“And  _ why _ are we talking about your little spark-to-spark with the local crime boss, again?”

“Because he provided me with the historical context I needed to continue solving the puzzle,” Prowl answered.

Crosswise gave him a dubious look. “Right. The succession dispute. How was that relevant to the warehouse case?”

“Three vorns after the dispute, Jazz’s Sire faced the first real challenge to his authority: a foreign smuggling group attempted to take advantage of his perceived weakness to move into his territory.”

“You’d already figured that out.”

“Yes, but then Titanium gave me what the media could not: the name of the interlopers’ ship and his brother’s next move against this new threat.”

.

.

And thus, presumably, the fictional Jazz’s next move as well.

The raid was tomorrow evening. According to Titanium’s information, the police  _ had _ found the foreign smugglers’ ship and interfered in the raid. So Prowl knew he could find the ship if he looked in the right place. He also knew that his chances of tying Jazz to the raid were slim. To catch Jazz he had to do something the police  _ hadn’t _ done when this had actually been happening.

Briefly he considered contacting the in-game Jazz and offering to ignore his tip-off, allowing the raid to go without interference, but then dismissed the idea. He hadn’t yet met the fictional Jazz and had no way of contacting him to make the offer.

Just as briefly he thought about making the same offer to the  _ real _ Jazz, since he had nothing to prove to the fictional one, but then dismissed it too.

He needed to do something different. Something neither Jazz, nor other Jazz, would expect.

He was still pondering it when Crosswise reminded him, towards the end of his shift, that he had a date. He paused the game.

.

.

.


	6. Part 5

The date was a location-based event.  _ Elements _ was a romantic little place not far from the hospital. Prowl got a table for two and commed Jazz to tell him that he was welcome to join him if he was free. It seemed a shame to waste a visit to a place like this on just a fictional date.

Prowl could still see the building’s architectural origins as a warehouse in the shape of its outside, in its spacious interior and stark pillars. Yet the interior designers had done a very good job of turning the space intimate. False, movable walls changed the acoustics and muffled the sounds of the other patrons, though they did nothing to muffle Prowl’s awareness of them. A giant chandelier was suspended on antigravity repulsors, rotating slowly. Its light was deliberately kept dim. Easily seen if one looked up and looked at it, but not the light mechs saw by at the table. That was provided by the flame of a single flickering oil lamp set in the center of each table. The light was bright enough to illuminate each table, but nothing beyond it, giving the illusion that his was the only table present.

Since he arrived before either of his dates did, he ordered a high quality mid-grade energon mix to share (his nurse-date would be going on-shift after the meal, so high-grade, however mild, was not appropriate) and a sampler plate of mildly intoxicating jellied treats.

Ivorycharm was described as a petite femme with elegant doorwings and pure white paint.

.

.

“So why’s Jazz setting you up in his little story with someone else?” Crosswise asked.

“Despite the fact that I had originally agreed to the date in a fit of pique, that was something I had wondered myself. I have figured out that he wished me to establish a rapport with one of the main characters in his little drama, but why is she important? That comes later.” Prowl gave a smug tilt of his doorwings. “Besides, I thought you didn’t care about who I dated.”

Crosswise just grumbled.

.

.

“You must be Prowl,” she said as she sat down across from him. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“A pleasure returned,” Prowl said formally.

“Business first,” she said as she poured a measure of the mid-grade into one of the two small, delicately carved crystal cubes that had come with the much larger pitcher. Prowl followed suit. They mirrored each other, taking their first sips. “Primus, that’s a good blend.” She did not put the cube down when she leaned forward urgently. “You know that Family doesn’t use public hospitals and morgues.”

“I had surmised as much.” Prowl did put his cube down. He was waiting for Jazz and did not have the same urgency to take his meal before his shift started that Ivorycharm did.

"Five vorns ago I was dating a Family enforcer. He was young and awkward and we really clicked, for a while at least. As a favor to him, I worked at one of the private clinics they use instead of the public emergency rooms. I know the location, a few names."

Prowl frowned. This would have been a lot more useful yesterday, when his chances of catching the mechs still there were highest. "Why wait until now to tell me this?"

"When he and I broke up, I was told in no uncertain terms by his Cousins to keep my mouth shut or else." She shivered and Prowl reached across the table to briefly lay his hand on hers in comfort. "I didn't want to say anything at the hospital, in case."

"I understand," said Prowl. "You're doing the right thing. Do you need me to put you in protective custody?"

Her smile was still a bit uncertain around the edges, but she said, "No. Just…” She gathered her courage and leaned forward again, looked into his optics, and asked, “Is Prowl what everyone calls you, or do you have a nickname I should know about?”

Was she actually flirting? Prowl had thought this was a lead, not a date-date, but apparently Jazz wanted it to be both. He debated if he should let her down gently. What reason could Jazz have for writing this in? It didn’t add to the realism of working the cases the way waking him up in the middle of the night did, but it had to have some purpose.

To give him an emotional stake in the story, he finally decided, and perhaps to attempt to distract him later by putting his “loved one” in danger.

“Prowl’s fine,” he murmured back. “And you? Do you prefer a derivative or your full name when off-duty?”

“My friends call my Ivory.”

“Ivor~y,” he sounded it out, examining the glyphs carefully and she smiled in response. “And are we friends, Ivory?” he flirted back.

“I hope we could be.”

For a long moment Prowl floundered. Small talk was not his strong suit. Fortunately, the date couldn’t go on too long; she had her shift at the hospital to get to. So he said, “Maybe we can make friends over desert. What’s your favorite?”

She laughed. “Oh, I am terribly decadent. I like crystal cordials the best, but they don’t make those here.”

“Would an energon parfait, to share, be an acceptable substitute?” he lowered his voice to what he hoped was a flirtatious purr, “At least until you can come to my place for… cordials.”

He felt ridiculous, but she accepted his suggestion and they shared the treat. She refused his offer to walk her to the hospital, but gave him a soft kiss as they parted ways. 

He followed her form with his optics until she was out the door. 

Another’s gaze tingled across his plating and he turned to meet the mech’s blue visor through the small space between the false walls separating their tables. The mech was the most handsome, striking, bewitching, tempting —

.

.

“I get the point.”

“In this case I am only reciting what the game said. Verbatim.”

Crosswise groaned.

.

.

—interesting, irresistible, tantalizing, sexy, enchanting, engaging, delightful, captivating, alluring black and white mech he’d ever seen before in his life. They held each other’s gaze for a long, static-charged moment, then the mech finished paying his check and sauntered out the door.

Jazz sat down at his table just as the fictional Jazz left the restaurant.

Prowl paused the game. “What’s the point of setting up a love triangle?”

He got a shrug in response. “Fun. Gives me a chance to act all jealous and possessive.”

“You know I’ve optics only for you,”

Jazz scooted his chair around so that they could almost touch as they shared the plate of jellied treats. “I know. Don’t give me many chances to stake m’claim, do you?”

“Well, in that case,” There were two false walls and a table being cleared by the waiter in preparation for new guests in the way, but Prowl didn’t need to look to sense the lonely mech who’d gotten stood up by his own date. He’d been checking his communications suite for messages and making forlorn sighs in the direction of the door since he had been seated. Prowl started to stand…

… Jazz caught his hand, pulled Prowl back down into his chair, and swung over to straddle Prowl’s hips, pressing him into the padding. “Gimme a word,” Jazz demanded.

“Helium,” Prowl responded automatically, because right now everything tingled pleasantly where Jazz’s plating pressed against his own, and he wanted nothing more than Jazz to stay right where he was. It was what Jazz needed to hear, and he didn’t hesitate before leaning down and claiming Prowl lips in a deep, possessive kiss.

.

.

“Please tell me you didn’t do anything in the restaurant,” Crosswise groaned.

“Would you want to hear about it if we did?” Prowl said, and his partner groaned, slapping his hands over his audios in an attempt to muffle Prowl’s next sentence, which was “No. We went home before we had sex.”

“Damnit Prowl.”

“You know I will stop as soon as you  _ stop asking _ .”

“Case!”

.

.

He called the precinct and set up a protection detail for Ivorycharm, anyway.

The next day was his day off, so Prowl risked leaving the game unpaused while he recharged so that his character would also sleep. He did, however, leave it next to  _ Jazz’s _ berth instead of his own. Of course Jazz would wake him up if the game made something happen, but at least Jazz would get woken up  _ first _ .

But no. This time the game let him sleep through the night, and he reported for his shift on time.

To his embarrassment, he was so focused on Titanium’s information that he spent two breems looking for a  _ ship _ before remembering that Praxus didn’t have a shipyard. Jazz may have based his caper off of real events, in Polyhex, but the story was set in Praxus, written so as to feel real to a native Praxan. And all of Praxus’ shipping was done by train.

He didn’t have time to start a serious search for the right freight cars and their loading docks before someone sat down on the other side of the desk, across from Prowl and Crosswise. They both looked up.

Skyglass was as perfectly detailed as he would have been walking into the studio’s broadcasting room. Prowl checked the game’s chronometer and his notes, then said, “Our appointment isn’t for another joor.”

The reporter smiled in return. “I had the time free. I decided to drop in and get this done before something interfered with our scheduled time together.”

What was  _ with _ Jazz and all the characters flirting with him?

Because it was really  _ Jazz _ flirting with him, even if it was by proxy, he answered his own question.

He ignored the flirt and asked the first question. That was the trick with reporters; you always inevitably ended up answering some of their questions, but you needed to get them to answer yours first. “Who leaked the details from the warehouse?”

Skyglass examined his fingertips faux-casually. “Dear, you wouldn’t expect me to reveal my sources, now would you?”

He had a camera attachment in his shoulder, Prowl noted. It would be running, he knew. “Your source was from within the police department,” he said levelly, but with an aggressive flare of his doorwings, “all of whom are required by contract to pass your inquiries to the primary investigators — Crosswise and I. Which means you  _ and _ your source can both be brought up on charges of obstruction of justice. Now,” he relaxed his doorwings to something only slightly less confrontational, “I would much rather reprimand the one who gave you the information than you, but since I don’t know who he or she is, I will have to instead settle for...   _ deterring _ reporters from interviewing anyone but the primary investigator in the future.”

The air of faux-casualness became more and more false as Prowl spoke, until it was a brittle and cracked facade. “Well then…” Skyglass shuttered his optics and took a deep in-vent, then let it back out more slowly. “It doesn’t look like I have much of a choice, does it?” Prowl just stared at him. “Stainless, one of the coroner-medics.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

The reporter recovered his composure quickly. “Well, since I’m not allowed to talk to anyone but you, sweetspark, how about answering a couple of questions for me? Cause if I get nothing, then I’m going to have to take  _ all _ my gang and rogue military theories to your captain, and  _ he’ll _ arrange for a  _ press conference _ . That’ll be fun for you, I’m sure.”

Prowl considered. “Two questions,” he conceded. “Make them good questions.”

“Oh, will do!” Skyglass leaned over his bumper and splayed his doorwings attractively; he was visibly disappointed when Prowl was unaffected by his display. “So… Which of the Families do you suspect was behind the warehouse fight?”

As far as Prowl knew, Praxus only had the one, with a few branches that had minor disagreements with each other, but all answered to Titanium. However, Jazz had warned him that there were details that made the fictional Praxus more like Polyhex. He supposed this was one of them. He almost said  _ Jazz’s _ because he knew he was hunting Jazz, even if he had nothing to base a suspicion of it on right now, but he stopped himself. “We are pursuing all possible leads at this time and we do not, as yet, have  _ evidence _ that one of the Families is involved.”

“Lame,” Skyglass drawled. “Non-answers are super lame.”

“Not my problem,” Prowl said. “Next question.”

“So  _ is _ this the opening salvo of a new gang war?”

“Right now it is the belief of the police department that while this was most likely the result of a conflict between two syndicates, it will not approach the scale of the conflicts three vorns ago.”

“Stock answer still, but a less lame one at least.” His optics flickered as he reviewed the footage he’d gotten. “Meh. It’s going to have to be good enough, isn’t it. Catch ya later.”

And with that, the reporter sauntered away.

Prowl looked up to see Jazz watching him amusedly. “Ready to go for a drive, love?”

“Of course,” he paused the game and left it on his kitchen table.

.

.

.


	7. Part 6

He took the time to send a couple of undercover officers over to the clinic Ivorycharm had named, with instructions to take pictures of anyone coming and going, but not to interfere.

After that, it only took Prowl three breems to correlate Titanium’s information to the proper part of the train yard, then connect the train cars to one of the victims via the mech’s multi-city work visa. Convincing the captain to prepare a strike team and sniper took much longer. Prowl keenly felt the time tick down and away to when Jazz’s raid on the foreign smugglers was scheduled to happen. Prowl worked barely a breem at a time around his normal workload, and Captain Comet still was so stubborn about it that it took until Prowl’s next day off to get everything in place.

After he had the raid on the trainyard all arranged, he paused the game until he had a chance to walk the trainyard, getting a sense of the space and the buildings around before he was put in the position of coordinating what he knew was going to be a three-way clusterfrag between the smugglers, the police, and Jazz’s strike team.

He ran simulation after simulation, but no matter how many times he walked the trainyard, planning and plotting, he could find no way of avoiding the complete and utter clusterfrag he knew it was going to be. There were just too many unknowns: the number of smugglers and how hard they would fight, what weapons they had, everything about Jazz’s attack -- too many to control. He watched the casualties pile up over and over again and finally decided to focus on getting his officers out alive, and chipping away at Jazz’s impenetrable wall between himself and an arrest.

Jazz watched him pace the trainyard, sometimes speaking calmly, sometimes yelling at the datapad as he coordinated the police raid. Prowl could hear Jazz’s systems rev and his fans  _ whirr _ away as Prowl turned an impossible plan into an organized retreat. Five officers shot, but none dead. 

Prowl didn’t feel like having sex afterward, and Jazz didn’t push. Instead, they went out for frozen energon treats, and Prowl reviewed the pictures that he’d ordered the sniper to take.

“If the situation devolves and you cannot provide supporting fire,” he’d instructed Darkbolt, the sniper, “I need you to take pictures. Doesn’t matter of who.  _ Everyone _ . We’ll sort them out later. That’s your job: photographic evidence of who is present.”

Jazz’s engine revved again when Prowl revealed the pictures to him, which did give Prowl a little thrill through his spark. This was why he hadn’t been worried when Jazz had revealed he had a police kink; Jazz so obviously had so much of a  _ Prowl has a  _ **_fantastic_ ** _ mind  _ kink that Prowl knew his paint job was just a bonus, not the point. A perk, not a motive, in Jazz’s own words. 

And Jazz was  _ thrilled _ to find that Prowl had come away from the raid with more than just bodies, injured policemechs, and warrants for the arrest of those Kanoex smugglers who had escaped.

Of course Darkbolt didn’t catch Jazz on film. That would have been too easy. Instead he was going to have to take his pictures to Organized Crime and begin the tedious process of identifying mechs, arresting them, and coaxing them to sell out someone higher up in the organization. Something he  _ knew _ was extremely chancy with Polyhexian mobsters. Clan loyalties were too strong for most threats of harsher sentences and the corresponding promises of lighter ones to work the same way as they did on other kinds of syndicates. And a highly-priced defense lawyer was as likely to walk in and pick up the case of a minor thug as of the Family Sire himself, because those loyalties went both ways.

Except… Prowl stared at the picture of Ricochet leading the attack. 

Ricochet would never roll over on his twin. Never. Pulling him in would not lead to Jazz, which was who Prowl really wanted to catch. It was frustrating to be  _ so close _ , because he knew,  _ knew, _ that Ricochet being there at the trainyard meant Jazz was involved, and yet  _ so far _ from pinning anything on the fictional Jazz.

To make things worse, as soon as he entered the images into his case file and requested further information on these individuals from Organized Crime, Turbine and Beacon swooped in and claimed it as their case. Prowl complained to Captain Comet, but was told firmly that he was a Homicide cop, and as such he had other things to do than chasing smugglers. He reinforced his point by giving Prowl the files for two more cases to solve and telling him to get to it.

Prowl seethed at Jazz, who just leaned forward and offered a spoonful of his own sublimating treat to Prowl. “Wanna taste?”

Jazz was a fragging  _ tease _ is what he was, and Prowl said so. In sharp, angry words that made his lover snicker. Even Prowl had to admit (later) it had probably been amusing to listen to.

During his free time over the next decaorn, he spent his next in-game shift solving the two cases that had been dumped on him. The first was a mugging turned killing. When Prowl tracked him down, the perp still had his victim’s personal effects in his subspace. The second looked like it might have been a home invasion, but a careful reconstruction of the scene had proven it to be a domestic murder-suicide. Then two more cases came up — both vehicular hit and run homicides — that consumed yet another in-game shift. He felt like any chance of catching Jazz was being buried beneath busywork.

He ended up venting his frustrations to Ivorycharm at a less fancy, but no less romantic bistro overlooking the Crystal Gardens. He was glad he managed to look like a complete idiot pouring his spark out to a datapad only in front of the single waiter, who was very much ignoring his only customer.

The nurse didn’t have any answers for him.

He sulked in a private corner of the garden afterwards, watching the play of lights from Praxus reflect off of the facets of the living crystals. How was he supposed to solve the case when office politics were so...  _ obstructionist? _

He knew he would never feel this way about this happening for real. He  _ was _ Homicide, and chasing smugglers and Family members wasn’t his job unless they killed people. Which they had, here, but he had nothing to tie them to the crime except the failed raid. If it were a real case, it was time, past time, for him to pass it to Organized Crime and move on. And that was before he’d started dating Jazz and it had become a conflict of interest to work any case involving Jazz’s family. But in the game  _ he _ was supposed to be solving things, tracking Jazz and…

...And what? Arresting him? Convicting him? Putting the fictional Jazz in prison where he would not be able to run his criminal syndicate? He turned his motives over and over in his processor. This wasn’t about catching Jazz and proving himself smarter than his lover. He loved the challenges Jazz presented, but even Jazz admitted that Prowl would be able to catch him, given time and incentive. That Prowl  _ could _ accumulate evidence for a conviction was not the point. He was still approaching the case too much like himself, and not the not-yet-corrupt cop he was pretending to be.

It was hard, though, when he hadn’t yet come across any chances to  _ be _ corrupt. For the first time he wondered how potential “payrolls” were singled out from the ones that wouldn’t dream of taking a bribe, and the ones who would take the fact that they had been approached to Internal Affairs and turn the situation around into a sting designed to net everyone involved, criminals and other corrupt cops alike. Such stings happened, Prowl knew, but so did corruption. How did people like past-Jazz or Titanium know who to approach? 

“That him?”

As though summoned by his thoughts, the game he hadn’t paused after the date  _ blatted! _ for his attention as fictional-Jazz sauntered up to Prowl’s little nook of self-pity.

“Looks like.”

Prowl was struck speechless. Of all the ways he’d imagined encountering Jazz again, randomly in the park was not one of them!

Jazz stood there, all lethal grace and sharp lines a step in front of two bodyguards. His smile was charm, and devastation, and Prowl shuddered. He transformed back to his mech-form to talk to them. Calm. Calm. Calm… And while he told himself that, he wondered if his character was about to get murdered for being such an  _ idiot _ as to sulk in the park while working an organized crime case. “Can I help you gentlemen?” he forced himself to say, neutrally.

Jazz’s smile widened, like the slash of a knife. “I like this one. Make a note of that, Nightdance.”

“Of course, sir.”

‘Sir’? Prowl narrowed his optics, taking in the three mechs in front of him. Their colors were different of course, and Nightdance and the other bodyguard were both larger, bulkier, but he could see the relation between the three mechs. Like the tiny differences that denoted kinship or not among Praxans, it was subtler among Polyhexians than the wildly varied frametypes of some other city-states. The exact  _ shape _ of the visor, the angle of the sensor-horns, designed for subtle similarity… before he’d started dating Jazz and been adopted into the reputation-based social structure of Little Polyhex, he would have never seen the relationship between the three. Not just Cousins, but cousins as well. 

“Sir?” Antagonizing Jazz was probably not the best idea, but, “Don’t you mean ‘Sire’, Nightdance?”

The two bodyguards stiffened, but Jazz didn’t visibly react. “Smart too.”

“You’re not making it a difficult conclusion to come to,” Prowl said.

“Hmmm…” Jazz responded thoughtfully, stepping into Prowl’s space with all his lethal grace. Even knowing that  _ this _ Jazz was not his gentle lover, was dangerous, could kill him, Prowl found it difficult not to respond to the mech’s grace. This may be a might-have-been, but it was still  _ Jazz _ . And to his relief, Jazz noticed the interested cant of his doorwings, and the excitement that hovered on the edge between  _ threat response _ and  _ lust _ in his field. Jazz responded, naked  _ threat _ in his demeanor becoming something a bit more… manipulative. “Perhaps I could make things a bit  _ harder, _ just for you.”

Well, if  _ that _ wasn’t a declaration of intent, Prowl didn’t know what was. He tried again for a flirtatious growl as he responded with, “How so, Sire?” and watched the most controlled of shivers flutter across Jazz’s plating in response.

Jazz came right up to Prowl. Their vents washed over each other in the cool air. Prowl was captivated by that visor; Jazz looked deeply into his optics. Jazz was slightly shorter, but he had the charisma to make himself larger in Prowl’s perception. Even looking down into his visor couldn’t break that spell. Presumptuous as the real Jazz had never been with him, he trailed short claws ( _ Titanium and Ricochet both had those, but Jazz didn’t; he must have blunted them when he moved... _ ) over the delicate wires of Prowl’s throat. “Figure it out,” Jazz said harshly. “You can do it; I always did like the smart ones.”

Then he turned and stalked away; Nightdance stepped to the side to let his Sire pass before both bodyguards followed him into the night. Leaving Prowl alone in the park, clutching a datapad, his fans  _ whirring _ in a most unseemly manner.

He was almost home before he realized what had been off about that scene: Ricochet had not been in the park with them.

.

.

“And?” 

Prowl looked at Crosswise. “And what?”

“What next?”

“Ah,” Prowl settled himself. “Nothing. I’ve left the game paused since then. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

Crosswise’s vocalizer clicked, obviously torn between his curiosity and wariness of Prowl’s penchant for  _ too much information _ . Finally he said, “What’s the significance of Ricochet not being there?”

“Ricochet is Jazz’s  _ twin, _ ” Prowl said, as though the answer should be obvious. To anyone sparked and raised in Polyhex, he was sure it would have been instantly obvious; to Crosswise that fact failed to reveal its significance. Even for Prowl, with his growing experience with Polyhexian kin ties and what they meant, it had taken almost a joor to figure it out. Finally, after staring at Crosswise’s stubborn and uncomprehending expression for several kliks, Prowl relented. “Titanium said it earlier: Ricochet and Jazz were partners. And intimidation is Ricochet’s specialty. He should have been there for that confrontation.”

“So where was he?”

“I haven’t turned the game back on to check yet, but I have my suspicions.”

“Well don’t hold me in suspense.” Crosswise rolled his optics.

“I suspect Turbine and Beacon used my photographs as grounds on which to arrest him.”

Crosswise grinned. “Well that’s it then. Case closed. That’s pretty airtight evidence you got, no wiggling out of it. Ricochet’ll roll on his twin and you’ve got your conviction.”

“Ricochet will never turn state’s evidence on Jazz,” Prowl said quietly. “All this does is put Ricochet’s case in the hands of the lawyers, and put Jazz on the defensive.”

“Defensive, like threatening a police officer? Because that’s a crime too.”

“Nothing he said was so obviously a threat that the charge will stick.” Prowl swept his wings high in assertion. “No. I need to regain control of the case from Organized Crime.”

“So you’re headed back to the station next?”

“Actually,” Prowl said, plucking the datapad from Crosswise’s hands and turning it off. “First I’m headed for a sex shop, and then I am tracking down Jazz’s manor for more threat-laced flirting.”

Disgust bloomed across his partner’s expression and EM field. “Too much information.”

“I am loathe to continue to repeat myself, Crosswise, but I will: if the answers bother you,  _ stop asking _ .”

.

.

.


	8. Epilogue

Prowl hadn’t lied: he  _ was _ going to a sex shop — in reality. He still needed a new pair of cuffs, padded ones that wouldn't chafe Jazz’s wrists but still  _ looked _ real enough to be part of that particular fantasy. He was, however,  _ also _ headed back to the police station in the game. He had something he needed to pick up there, not the least of which was access to Turbine’s file on fiction-Jazz, since he didn’t know where the mech’s manor was. 

Of course Turbine’s actual file on Jazz hadn’t been accurate in regards to Jazz’s residence until Prowl had revealed their error to them, but he gambled that the fictional one would have that much, since Prowl literally had no other way of tracking down the Family Sire at this juncture otherwise.

The lobby restaurant of one of Praxus’ oldest hotels wasn’t to the tastes of the real Jazz, but its dark corners, private booths, and spacious aisles certainly fit what he knew of the fictional one. Just as importantly, it fit what Prowl knew of the planned roleplay that was to be Prowl’s reward for winning: a confrontation down here in the lobby, followed by a night with Jazz-the-gangster in a rented “manor”. He got a private booth near the back of the restaurant, ordered a wildly pink and orange swirled energon cocktail and a more sedate silver-laced cube of mild high-grade for himself, and commed Jazz to join him.

It took several breems, but Jazz came in with his much more familiar bounce. “Hey Prowl. Didn’t expect you ta find this place for a while longer. Couple’a decaorns.”

“I know. You had an entire romance novel subplot, a love triangle between the two of us and the nurse, all planned out.” Prowl leaned forward. “Loathe as I am to make your hard work for naught, I however believe that I have crafted a solution to your puzzle now.”

“Sure. Let’s see it.”

Prowl turned the paused game and its case file over towards Jazz, who obediently leaned over the table and paged through it. “Right now, this is one of two copies of the case file that exist in the game-realm. There is currently a fire in the police evidence room destroying the others. The other copy is in a safety deposit box, which will be opened in the case of my death.” Jazz was starting to look a bit starstruck, even as his fans clicked on quietly, and Prowl allowed his doorwings to flare slightly as he preened. He smiled as he flipped the file to the photograph of Ricochet. “I don’t have to blackmail you with your crimes, Jazz. Your twin’s will do just as well, and he is so much more careless than you are.”

Because that was the key with Polyhexian Families. That was what made dealing with them truly different than other kinds of syndicates: love and loyalty and the pride in who they were and where they came from that no amount of jail time, no threats from the police, could crack.

“Consider this… a declaration of intent,” Prowl said quietly, and slid the case file to the mob boss sitting across from him. Ricochet had been arrested, it would go to court, but since he hadn’t been seen by anyone who could identify him during the raid itself, there wasn’t even the slightest chance of a conviction without the photograph. The same was true for the rest of Jazz’s people who had been arrested in the aftermath of that fiasco, but they were secondary to Jazz’s twin and partner.

Jazz shook himself, and Prowl watched the persona of the mech he’d almost been in Polyhex settle over his frame like a second set of armor. “Yeah? And why should I believe you, Pro~wl?” Prowl allowed himself to shiver at the way the threatening tone slid over his armor. If  _ this _ Jazz didn’t believe his answer, he was going to be dragged outside and shot, rather than dragged upstairs and clanged senseless. “Nice, upstanding officer like yourself, why should I believe a word’a this?”

“I’m tired of other officers taking credit for my work,” he said. “I’d prefer to work with someone who  _ appreciates _ me.”

Jazz stared at him for several long, tension-filled moments. Their EM fields crackled together, the beginnings of the storm of violence or lust that could follow.

Then Jazz laughed and broke character. “Good thing I rented us a room on m’way in.”

.

.

.

End


End file.
